Introduction
Creativity and innovation are essential for the enhancement of organizational performance and is a vital ingredient for long-term sustenance. The process of generation of a new and innovative idea is a way of creation of competitive advantage for people within the organization. Studies in the area of creativity and innovation in business can be of various types. Innovation can be design-centric, wherein the product undergoes a radical change.
Adoption of creative and innovative product design and/or changes in organizational design, corporate strategy, or leadership style can boost performance. Overall, there are two distinct divisions in the theories presented by creativity and innovation researchers – one group supports product innovation while the other cluster believes there is a need to revamp the complete business model and leadership style in order to establish a culture of innovation.
In the case of product innovation, it should be understood that radical change in a product is possible only by a change in technology and not by labor-intensive design (Norman & Verganti 2014). The latter can only create incremental innovation but not radical change. Some researchers believe that product innovation is the key to renewing performance and profit to the organization (Slater, Mohr & Sengupta 2014). Researchers believe radical product innovation can provide customer benefit and reduce cost thus creating an opportunity to create a new business (Slater et al. 2014).
Innovation in a business model brings innovation and commercialization, together. Such a model relates to corporate practices or in simpler words, the commercial viability of the firm. Technology is a key driver of innovation. However, innovation in business models is essential to garnering the commercial value of technological innovations (Schneider & Spieth 2013). Business model innovation is believed to have become a potent source of value creation, especially at times of environmental volatility (Schneider & Spieth 2013).
Innovation in the business model changes the way the company operates. When the conventional corporate strategies fail to create profit, there is a definite requirement to change the old corporate ideas (Teece 2010). Thus, this necessity creates the need to reassess the methods by which the existing resources and capabilities can be redistributed after looking into all external and internal factors affecting the organizations. Thus, the idea of the business model innovation rests on changing the core, the fundamental corporate model instead of making changes to a single product (Schneider and Spieth 2013).
Creativity and innovation have become an important part of the business. Most organizations strive to become creative and innovative and it helps organizations to improve performance. However, the employment of innovation within organizations may differ. Some may aim for radical product innovation like 3M or Apple while others may aim at innovation in a business model like Uber. Given this background, the paper will provide a plausible strategy for a start-up to employing creativity and innovation.
Challenge 1
As a start-up, the idea would be to create an organization that will fill in the gap in the already existing businesses. Further, one has to look for competitive advantages while beginning a start-up (Freeman and Engel 2007). Therefore, here is proposed a smartphone repair chain that can be developed as an online model.
For generating an innovative idea for our start-up, we will undertake a gap analysis. First, we will have to conduct a study of the existing customer services provided by smartphone companies and find out if there are any other companies that provide only repairing services. Gap analysis is essential to understand what areas of service are not provided to the customer. Identifying the gap will help us to ascertain the products that our start-up can offer. Gap analysis of the smartphone repairing market will help us to identify the existing fissures in the market where we can position our services.
We will brainstorm about the possible services that can be provided to our customers. In addition, we will come up with the most innovative ideas based on the identified needs. Further, we will compare the ideas generated to the existing concepts in the industry. This will help us to ascertain the degree of innovativeness of our product. Based on this comparison, we can make our products more creative and interesting.
Based on the results of the gap analysis, which can be done through a survey of smartphone users, we will come up with the services that a repair company can provide. For this start-up, I propose an innovative business model. I choose this model because business process innovation adds value to the overall performance of the organization (Trimi & Berbegal-Mirabent 2012). Another reason is to impress start-up investors who have a strong preference for technology-based enterprises. However, it should be kept in mind that inventions and discoveries will not ensure the commercial viability of the company (Freeman and Engel 2007).
Since there is no smartphone repair market, it was difficult to gather information about existing companies and therefore creating analogies. Further, while doing a gap analysis, we encountered the problem of gathering information, as the concept of smartphone repairing is new to the customers.
Challenge 1 provides us many opportunities to brainstorm and come up with innovative ideas that are financially viable. The main target was to find the unexploited market through gap analysis.
References
Freeman, J & Engel, JS 2007, ‘Business Model Innovation: towards an integrated future research agenda’, California Management Review, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 94-119.
Norman, D & Verganti, R 2014, ‘Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change’, Design Issues, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 78-96.
Schneider, S & Spieth, P 2013, ‘Business Model Innovation: towards an integrated future research agenda’, International Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 1-34.
Slater, SF, Mohr, JJ & Sengupta, S 2014, ‘Radical Product Innovation Capability: Literature Review, Synthesis, and Illustrative Research Propositions’, Journal of Product Innovatio Management, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 525-566.
Teece, DJ 2010, ‘Busienss MOdels, Busienss Strategy and Innovation’, Long Range Planning, vol. 43, pp. 172-194.
Trimi, S & Berbegal-Mirabent, J 2012, ‘Business model innovation in entrepreneurship’, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 449-465.